3D Printer Recommendation?

My application would be making one off sizes of products that I rarely get asked for and that I don't now sell, because they would not justify the cost either of tooling or of holding a quantity in stock. Nobody is going to be happy paying £100 or more for something that looks tatty, so surface finish is important. One option I have considered is an Ultimaker 3, which has dual nozzles. I don't yet know if it would work that way, but I was thinking of using one fine nozzle for the outer surfaces and a coarser nozzle to bulk fill between the outer layers.

I have an Ultimaker 2+ - a little over your budget, but it's given me hours of endless fun. Most recently I used it to fix the rocker mechanism in an angle-poise light. The original simply part was badly designed and rendered the lamp unusable. There are numerous other examples of "stuff around the house" that have been fixed by printing something.

That said, may I suggest that the issue is not printing, but designing the part.

The real investment (time not money) is knowing how to design 3d parts and the compromises you make to have them useable after printing. Getting hold of design software is easy (free), learning how to use it, then how to print your designs is time-consuming and frustrating but bloody rewarding when you make progress.

If you want to design your own models, I suggest it may be worth a few hundred quid just to have something to print with so you can compare your design with the lump of misshapen plastic that took four hours to print.

Ok, that's the sort of 'non production' use that may be appropriate.

Is this an assembly as I'm not sure you would get though even 15 quids worth of filament in one print job on a 'std' sized printer?

Is it though? So we aren't talking utility' here then?

No, I don't think it would because each print layer is one layer and of a uniform thickness (irrespective of the nozzle diameter).

Plus I think you are more likely to suffer registration and changeover errors with a dual extruder (possibly sorted with a post cleanup etc).

Like I mentioned, no one has ever commented on the finish of any of my print jobs ... because they weren't *expecting* any specific finish and whatever they say must have been considered acceptable?

I can't think of anything I could print to be (realistically) worth much over the cost of the materials and electricity ... because it's not that sort of thing (ignoring the design time etc).

Cheers, T i m

Materials are rarely a significant part of the cost of any manufactured item. IME, around 10-15% would be typical.

They have to look as good as anything else I am selling, which means that, ideally, they should look like injection mouldings. In some cases, they would be used with injection moulded items.

Much as I expected, which would mean very long print times to get a good quality product. Another option I might consider is using the printer to make a master for lost wax investment casting of the items.

As I am running a business, I can't ignore design time, the capital cost and depreciation of the equipment, general business overheads or the like.

If you want to do lost wax stuff then you can get photosensitive resins specifically to make the patterns. It burns off to virtually nothing when you drop in the metal.

A suitable printer would start at about £600 and go upwards depending on size, speed and automation requirements.

maybe something like

but check the reviews.

Thank you for that. It is useful to know. Although, I would be getting a foundry to make the parts, so if they do it that way, they would probably only need the data.

Quite .. and I still think it would be hard to get though even 10 quid's worth of std filament on one print job for a £100 item (on a std sized printer). ;-)

Ok, so comparing apples and oranges then?

See above.

Quite. However, these printers aren't supposed to be making 'product', they are there to make prototypes and but *can* be used for the final solution, if you aren't bothered about a mirror finish (on all faces) and don't require things to be produced at mass production rates.

Wouldn't you still have the same detailing issue though?

No one suggested you should (and all those would be amortized over the number of items you produce / capital expenditure tax offsets etc) ... so it just looks like a std 3D printer would be the wrong tool for your job.

As an aside ... I considered the capital cost of the printer to have been covered 100% on the first solution I was able to print that would have cost that to have made commercially. Everything else has been a bonus. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

iMaterialise , Shapeways, new shiny professional 3D hubs for final run part s in exotic material, 99 quid ebay special running PLA for prototyping, phy sical proto in hand beats highest res cad image for sure.

Voodoo, 3D print farm, reckon can be cost competitive up to 10,000 parts Vs injection moulding

Print farms are a thing

it`s not just cracker novelties and D&D dice nowadays,3d printed crane hook :

On 28/04/2018 11:04, T i m wrote: ...

They are all the same range of products to the customer.

One of the Ultimaker videos shows a Oscar statuette they have printed. The finish is good, but it took them 20 hours to print. Not a problem for a one off master, but not desirable if somebody wants to buy several of them.

An uninformed customer possibly. Would you also have to explain the difference between an original and a reprint of a picture?

Ok.

Indeed, and hence why such 3D printers aren't used for mass production and why they are probably not the right tool for your considered use. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Well-informed customers are a joy to deal with. Unfortunately, not all of them are. Last week I had to explain the difference between a 6" pipe and a 3" pipe, to discover eventually that the customer wanted a product for a 4" pipe.

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They are certainly not the best tool, but, as I no longer have an engineering workshop to call upon, I need to look at what I can fit in a corner of my office.

More printers.

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They cost £2k each. I would need to go into business doing 3D printing to justify buying more than one and I am looking to cut down on my work, not increase it.

You can have 10 for £2k and have a lot of change. The £2k ones don't actually print better, but they may be easier to use.

You could get a prusa multi-material machine for about £1k

Or maybe you want colour..

or a resin printer..

Agreed.

Hehe. Or the people who turn up to look at the 'Red car' you advertised to only turn it down because they really wanted blue? ;-(

But it doesn't matter if a 3D printer will fit does it if it doesn't cut the mustard?

Cheers, T i m

Which printers in that price range can achieve a 20 micron layer height using a 0.08mm nozzle, which is what the Ultimaker 2+ can do?

Which says it has a 50 micron layer height.

Which uses PLA filament, while I would want ABS, PVC and Nylon.

Again, wrong materials.

You have read the product spec for the two+?

It doesn't list 0.08mm for a nozzle or 20 micron layer height.

Ultimaker don't sell nozzles smaller than 0.25 on their site either.

Anyway the cheap ones are mechanically similar and use similar software (one of mine is a chineese copy of an ultimaker) so you could put a

I think you have been reading what individuals have been experimenting with. People are doing similar with all sorts of cheap printers but I don't think that you want to do that, it takes too much time.

Notes..

The 20 micron layer height is just going to be what you get when you turn a standard 4 mm lead screw by 1.6 degrees which is the normal step size on these printers. You could even claim 10 micron if you fit a more expensive 0.9 degree stepper or a 2mm pitch lead screw. They generally don't because the gains in quality aren't worth the increase in print times.

Layer height is linked to nozzle size. The nozzle head has to press the plastic down onto the preceding layer so the layer height has to be about 80% of the nozzle size or less. My printers will easily print 0.1 mm layer height even using a 0.4 mm nozzle but the print speed is so slow I never do it.

So more realistic then?

I believe it will print those but not in colour. The colour is done by painting the filament as it goes in and you can't paint some of them.

Better materials in most cases. You can get hard, flexible, casting, etc. resins. Printing in ABS and such like is not necessarily the best, I use ABS for one of my printers but when it runs out I ma going to switch to PETG I think.

I would have to pay to get them WRAS approved, which is not cheap.

PLA is used for food so it should be fine. As is PETG. I know ABS is used for drains and such but I don't know where its used on supply pipes, they are usually polyethylene of some sort. You can also print HIPS which should be safe. My £200 printer will do all those and nylon, etc.

Maybe for your use you need a sintering printer using nylon powder. They are only a few grand. 8-(

If the parts you make are fairly simple you could get a mill and make them from aluminium billets. Small NC mills are as cheap as 3d printers.